What You Have
by AndAgain
Summary: Soraya Cousland was trained well, but after a year of forced inactivity she's not exactly fighting fit. What will happen when everything she loved, but had never really appreciated, is ripped away from her as she is tossed into the storm of the Blight? And what about that handsome and irritatingly idealistic ex-Templar? Rated M for violence, language, and suggestive material!
1. Our Story Begins in Bed

**A/N: _So, DiT is definitely ON HOLD. That muse has fled and been replaced by another, the product of my most recent playthrough: Female Cousland! :D Please, please PLEASE read and REVIEW! I'm really in love with this one, and I have lots of neat ideas for the story. I've done tons of research into the lore and stuff!_**

**_Thanks a million!_**

**_-AA_**

**Disclaimer: Bioware's nouns, babe. Bioware's.**

It began just like any other day.

Soraya Cousland woke, on her back, staring at the elegantly embroidered canopy above her head.

"Oh, _Maker," _she moaned, throwing an arm dramatically over her eyes, "not _another _day!"

There was a tiny bit of light filtering through cracks in the heavy blue and gold bed-curtains. The thick, Orlesian silk comforter weighed down on the young woman like a ton of bricks. The gigantic pillows that she was lying on were so soft and plump and _squishy_that she felt like her head was slowly sinking. Everything about the room Soraya was in could be described as "plush".

There was a clinking of silver as the maid set down the breakfast tray, presumably on top of Soraya's desk.

"Winnie, is that you?" she asked, not moving an inch from her position.

"Yes, my Lady Cousland."

"You didn't put that down on top of my stuff, did you? And dispense with the Lady nonsense."

"No, I did not put it down on top of your dolls."

Soraya sat up, short-cropped red-brown hair sticking up wildly, as her cheeks colored.

"They are _not _just dolls!"

"Pardon me, but they don't look an awful lot like anything else"

"They are painstakingly crafted, unique and individual works of _art_!"

"Yes, my Lady. I think I'll take my leave now, if you'll dismiss me."

Soraya sighed, suddenly feeling spent.

"You're dismissed, Winnie."

"Thank you, my Lady."

The youngest Cousland slumped back on her overstuffed pillows with a groan, picking one up and smacking it down on her face.

"Maker, Rohlan, I can't do _anything _right. Now even the servants will hate me." she lamented, invoking the name of the man who had practically raised her for the last seven years.

"I'm completely useless here."

At the age of sixteen, Fergus Cousland had followed in his father's footsteps and gone to Alamar to train. Soraya, at the time only eleven, had raised such a ruckus in protest of being kept home that her parents had agreed to allow her to go as well when she was of age so long as she stopped threatening to break priceless family heirlooms.

They had assumed that she would forget the whole thing when she got a little older and came into her more womanly attributes, so they settled back into their daily routine.

Instead, on one of his visits home (the training was put on hiatus from mid-Harvestmere till the end of Wintermarch every year), Fergus had brought his little sister a handcrafted, exquisitely detailed miniature bow.

That was the end of any peace of mind their poor mother had hoped to gain as her children grew up.

Soraya quickly became an adept archer using the arrows her father had blunted with cotton. She practiced day and night - so much so that the Teyrn had a practice range set up near the stables. This was, despite the Teyrna's protests, actually quite a good idea, considering, as one servant put it, that "...them poor guards was going to go deaf, what wi' awl that fearful clattering of arrows on their 'elmets."

Once she reached the appropriate age, it was almost with relief that Soraya's parents waved goodbye to her on the ship from Denerim.

Now, they would be able to settle into their twilight years with their patient, loving son and his new family - he'd married at nineteen and produced an heir a conspicuously short number of months later - all the while expecting a matured, manageable daughter who was just as content as her brother with her lot in life to willingly return home in a year or two.  
Yes. A suitable match would be made - perhaps one of the Howe boys, or that lad Vaughan, Arl Uriel's son - she'd give them plenty of grandchildren, and they'd be able to retire to somewhere near Lake Calenhad confident that their children and their Teyrnir would be in safe hands.

This was not, however, meant to be.

The residents of the city Alamar are a hard, tough bunch. Living so close to the island of Brandel's Reach - the fabled docking-place of every raider ship on the Waking Sea - can take its toll on friendliness. They are a suspicious, unforgiving, and utterly unmovable people. It turned out that their stubborn pride and complete disregard for both etiquette and courtesy was exactly the right catalyst to bring out the person behind the spoiled little girl in Soraya.

Her master, Rohlan Swiftdraw, did not stand for ceremony. His was a grueling, seemingly endless course full of insurmountable obstacles and impossible demands. But Soraya was strong, and determined not to go home in defeat. It took nearly the entire length of the eight-and-a-half-month training period, but the young Cousland managed to earn both Rohlan's respect and his willingness to train her further.

She turned seventeen on the twenty-sixth of Kingsway, and spent her birthday cavorting through the streets of Alamar on a romp of hard-earned revelry with several of the townspeople and other students whom she had come to call friends.

That winter, she returned to Highever a confident, capable young woman. Her mother suggested that she stay, but Soraya insisted that she had more to learn, and her father and brother were in support of her return. Considering the massive improvement in her daughter's behaviour, the Teyrna made what she would later tell friends and family - and occasionally potential suitors - was probably either the biggest mistake or greatest achievement in all her days of mothering, and acquiesced.

So passed the young Cousland's eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth years. The winters at home came and went, with Soraya always staying for a shorter and shorter period of time. She seemed distant, distracted, and almost melancholy when she was living at the castle.

One evening at dinner with guests, her father remarked that, with all her standoffishness, she seemed practically Alamarri already. She responded, to the shocked silence of all assembled, with a terse

"Would that I were."

and left the table.

When she turned twenty-two and came home with most of her long, burgundy locks of previously waist-length hair completely unaccounted for and remarked on the situation only with a shrug and a "Fits better under a helmet." to offer her mother in explanation, the Teyrna called a stop to the young woman's adventures.

"This," she said, staring forcefully into her daughter's narrowed green eyes, "is the _end _of that."

And so Soraya now lay in her chambers, hating the stuffy room, the stuffy castle, the stuffy _everything_ after a full year of her mother's "re-conditioning" program of enforced noble attitude, surroundings, and activities - which most certainly did _not _include tearing through the countryside on horseback in your smalls on a dare, or really anything the young Cousland found fun or worthwhile at all.

She rose from her bed and parted the curtains, turning to fix her covers. One did not leave one's bunk untidied in the Alamar training camp, and she did not intend to lose the habits that let her feel as though she could take care of herself.

She had allowed her hair to be trimmed to look more tidy, but kept it short. She had refused to take on a lady in waiting.

But the Alamarri people had also taught her about something other than independence - they taught her of duty.  
And here, in Highever, she knew she had one. To her mother, to her father, to her brother. To her very country. So, she had consented to her mother's desire to begin the matchmaking process in earnest, and, since Cailan was taken, the aging Teyrna had called in every contact and favor she'd had in reserve from her considerable political career until she had quite a list of possible husbands.

Soraya, for her part, was just determined not to pick one she didn't actually _like._

At least, that had been the goal, before this thrice-damned _blight _had started.

She sat in front of her desk and contemplated her breakfast.

_Father and Fergus will be leaving soon, _she thought with a sigh, recalling the argument that had erupted when she had been informed.

"_I should go, not Fergus!" she screeched at her father's retreating form as he backed hastily out of the room. She threw another glass pot of paint at the door as it closed, splattering the 400-year-old wall-hangings with more of the colorful liquid. Then, distraught, she collapsed on her bed and cried for the first time in years._

_Her mother, unlikely as it seemed, was who came in to comfort her. She held Soraya until the tears dried up. _

"_He has a family," the girl whispered thickly, "I should go. I have less to lose."_

"_It's a man's duty to protect his family, sweetheart."_

"_Why can't it be a woman in stead?"_

_The Teyrna nudged her daughter into a sitting position, and smiled at her lovingly._

"_Think about it like this: Men are put on the frontlines because they are hot-headed and yearn for battle. Women are left at home so that someone with sense is able to rebuild after they've broken everything with pointy sticks."_

_Soraya laughed. Perhaps her mother understood after all._

The young noblewoman picked at her food, finally taking a deep breath and drawing on some of her teachings.

_Always eat, especially if you don't want to_

she thought as she shoveled the food into her mouth, finishing breakfast in a few minutes flat. She then stacked the plates and silverware on the tray and left them on her freshly made bed to be retrieved by the maid.

Usually, she would take it down to the kitchens herself, but today she wanted to get some work done before she had to leave her room.

When Soraya was in Alamar, she had wandered by chance into a shop for childrens' toys. The owner had been uncharacteristically kind and jovial for an Alamarri, and had offered to teach her how to fashion the fascinatingly sweet-looking wooden dolls that lined one wall of the store. The young Cousland, in return, exercised the knowledge of fine stitching and embroidery that her mother and nurses had drilled into her as a child and made clothes for the dolls.

The toys were a hit among the children, and Soraya quickly became fast friends with the little ones of the city. When she came back to Highever, she'd seen no need to discontinue the practice, and had been making dolls to send back to Alamar as Satinalia presents.

She was just putting the finishing touches on the face of a little boy soldier doll - he still needed a little gold on his epaulets - when there was a polite rap on the door.

"Come in," Soraya called, not looking up from her work.

"My Lady Cousland," said a small voice, "Your father requests your presence in the main hall."

She turned and nodded to the young page, then put in the last stitch on the soldier doll's uniform.

"There," she smiled, trying not to think about her father and brother's imminent departure, "you're all ready for battle."

She set the doll down, slipped on a pair of shoes, and stepped out into the corridor.

_This is probably to say goodbye, _she thought, waking down the hall and through the castle, nodding at servants who passed her by;

_I only hope that nothing goes wrong at Ostagar._


	2. Surprise! A Griffon and a Snake

_**A/N: **_**I can't help but be pleased that a couple of people out there liked that first chapter! Sorry it took so long to get this one out - I just want this to be the best it can be!****  
****Remeber to read **_**and review!**_

**-AA**

**Disclaimer: Bioware's stuff, I just play with it :D**

* * *

Soraya stood at the doorway of the main hall. She peeked inside of the room and then recoiled in disgust.

A guard was posted at every entrance, but this was mostly a formality. Today, however the youngest Cousland was pleased for their presence. Her father stood in the middle of the room, beside a couple of attentive servants. It wasn't the servants that bothered Soraya, though.

It was that disgusting _snake_ of a man, Arl Rendon Howe. Honestly, she couldn't understand why her father kept the rat around.  
His very being oozed slimy self-satisfaction. It was disgusting.

_Such a creature would never have survived in Alamar,_ Soraya thought bitterly. Nevertheless, with a sigh and a squaring of shoulders, she resolved to be courteous. His sons, of course, were of prime place in the list of possible suitors.

The young Cousland had seen recent paintings of them, and even met them, long ago. While Tomas, the younger, seemed to be a nauseatingly accurate double of his father, the elder brother Nathaniel had been strikingly handsome. In a vaguely arrogant kind of way.

Putting such thoughts from her head to be reviewed later, Soraya walked brusquely into the room. The low heels on her shoes smacked unpleasantly on the stone floor, and she winced internally. Her mother was always telling her to step more delicately, but it was hard to break years of habit and training to walk with a soldier's sense of purpose.

"Ah! My pup! Rendon, this is my daughter, Soraya. I do believe it's been awhile since you two have seen each other. Hasn't she grown?" Teyrn Cousland beamed at his youngest, one arm around the slightly shorter Arl's shoulders.

Howe seemed to be battling with mixed emotions, but a sort of sleazy smile masked the turmoil in his eyes as he wriggled away from Soraya's father and extended his hand.

She took it and shook, noticing how his face gleamed with a strange sheen - was that sweat? Why would Howe be sweating?  
Ignoring the oddity for the time being, Soraya curtseyed slightly. The ruffles of the dress itched distractingly against her legs, but she managed to hold the pose for a moment before straightening and letting go of the Arl's fingers.

"Arl Howe," she said respectfully, "it has been some time." _for a very good reason, you insufferable rodent._

"Lady Cousland," he nodded, "it has. You were only about this high when I saw you last." he smiled awkwardly, indicating a point at about his waist.

"Yes," she smiled, wondering how much longer she would have to endure the wretched little man, "how are your sons? Nathaniel and Tomas?"

Howe laughed ill-naturedly, raking his eyes across Soraya's form in barely disguised appraisal.

"Straight to the point, eh? Nathaniel is still in the Free Marches - he went there for training, much the same as you. Tomas, however, prefers the home life." here the Arl raised an eyebrow, smiling lasciviously, "He speaks very highly of you, you know..."

Soraya had to exert massive amounts of self control not to cringe. She had no interest in Tomas. But what was this about Nathaniel having gone to the free marches to train? The young Cousland could appreciate that kind of dedication, and perhaps time away from home had tempered the arrogance she remembered him possessing.

Soraya almost smiled at the thought of the last time she had seen the Howe boys. She'd been what - thirteen? Something like that. Which would have made Nathaniel the same age, and Tomas ten.

They'd come with their father on some kind of diplomatic envoy, but the three noble children had spent much of the week shrieking fit to give the Teyrna a heart attack and running pell-mell through the halls.

Soraya remembered that she'd shown the boys her precious bow, and while Tomas had been hopeless with it, Nathaniel was a natural. She'd been amazed at how quickly he picked up the difficult skill. Tomas, in a fit of jealousy, had thrown her bow over the battlements they'd been practicing on.

Soraya had been furious enough to beat him halfway to death, but when she challenged him to a fair fight, the boy turned out to be a born bully and goaded her into a trap that landed the young girl in the horse trough.

Fuming, Soraya had stormed inside and gotten cleaned up. She'd been feeling mildly better after her bath, but then found out that no-one had been able to find her bow. She'd curled up in her room and cried until she felt dried up and hollow. How could she have let her precious gift be lost? Why had she let that horrible boy touch the thing at all? She didn't deserve to be her brother's sister, or her father's daughter, if she couldn't best the twerp in a fight!

She'd clenched her little fists and dragged herself out of bed. It had to have been two in the morning, and she was exhausted, but determination ran deep in Cousland blood. The girl sat down at her desk and wrote her parents a note, explaining the whole situation.

Then, she'd slipped from her room and through the halls until she was in the kitchens. She knew about the servants' entrance, of course. She packed a loaf of bread, a wedge of cheese and some grapes into a handkerchief she'd brought for just that purpose, and ducked into the well-hidden passageway.

It had been dark, and damp, and cold, but the girl hadn't hesitated for a moment. Once she was out, she ran into the woods, determined to live off the land and never trouble her family again.

It had taken them two days to find her, and in the end it hadn't even been one of the guards.

Soraya would never forget the look on Nathaniel's face when he had come upon her makeshift camp. It had been something between relief and irritation.

He'd stomped into the clearing confidently, and she'd been shocked. He was covered in mud from the knee down, and had completely ruined what she knew were his best boots.

"How did you find me?" she asked incredulously, and he'd almost sneered.

"You weren't exactly hard to track. You left a trail as wide as a bear's."

"Oh."

There'd been an awkward silence, and then he'd taken a small pack he'd been wearing off his shoulder, opening it carefully.

From the the leather satchel, he withdrew her prized possession.

"My bow!" she'd cried, and lunged for it "Where did you find it?"

But the young Howe had held it out of her reach, glaring down his nose at her.

"You can have it back when you agree to return to your parents."

For a moment, she'd been torn. Then she'd nodded her head solemnly, and he'd given her the weapon and led her back through the forest to her home.

Now, Soraya shook the memory out of her head.

"Does he? How kind of him," she smiled tolerantly, "I don't remember him finding me particularly favorable."

Howe turned a faint shade of pink and looked about to retort, but Soraya's father intervened before she could start an argument proper.

"Yes, I'm glad we've had this chance to catch up, but I've a surprise for you both!"

"What? Bryce, what nonsense is this?" Howe snorted, turning in the direction that the Teyrn indicated.

The west door to the hall opened, and a man stepped through. He was tall and swarthy, with a short ponytail and a golden earring in one ear. His armor was intricate and shone like the sun, beautifully crafted designs made out of silver and gold. There were the twin handles of dual blades visible just over his shoulders. He looked stern and stoic, and walked toward the little group with a soldier's purpose.

When he got closer, Soraya was able to make out the central design on the front of his armor.

_A griffon!_

"Maker," she breathed, curtseying deeply to the newcomer, "a Grey Warden."

The man smiled and nodded, a twinkle in his eye as he bowed in greeting.

"Lady Cousland, I presume?" he said as he rose, and in turn inclined his head to her father, "And Teyrn Cousland as well." He then looked to Howe, raising an eyebrow minutely. "I don't believe we've met, good Ser."

The Teyrn laughed gently, patting the warden on the shoulder.

"This is Duncan, of the Grey Wardens." he said, "Duncan, this is Arl Rendon Howe of Amaranthine."

Howe inclined his head with a look of mild disgust as Duncan bowed deeply from the waist.

"And yes, this is my youngest - my daughter. Pup, what has Master Aldous taught you about the Wardens?"  
"I'm afraid that was so long ago, Father, that I cannot remember," Soraya responded with an apologetic look, "but in the Alamarri, they are revered as warriors without par, both in quality of character and skill."

The Teyrn nodded approvingly, and Howe made a vaguely sour expression. Duncan laughed.

"You trained among the Alamarri?" he chuckled, grinning, "Bryce, I must confess that while I _am _here for Ser Gilmore, your daughter's prowess with a bow has not gone unnoticed among our ranks. Should she ever desire to join, she would not be turned away."

The Teyrn's expression hardened.

"I'm sorry, Duncan, but I cannot permit that. I will not have both my children tumbled into the fray at once."

"Of course, Bryce. I apologize, I was merely complimenting your impressive raising of such a fine warrior."

_Oh, he thinks he's smooth. _Soraya thought, raising an eyebrow. As much fun as watching the two men play politics was, however, the young Cousland was pretty sure she had better things to do than stand there.

"Father, why did you call for me?"

"Oh! Yes, I wanted you to take a message to your brother. I want him to take most of the troops and leave without me. The Arl's men have been delayed, and I will wait here another day for their arrival."

"I still don't understand why I can't go with you." Soraya sighed, knowing that she'd gain no traction, no matter which argument she brought up.

"Yes, you do, Pup. Now, please go and tell Fergus."

"Yes, Father." she curtseyed stiffly to the three men, then clomped out of the room, sighing at the sound her shoes made on the stone.


End file.
